The present invention relates to artificial intelligence systems.
Systems claiming to simulate artificial intelligence are known in the art. These systems are usually adapted to receive input from a user, in either speech or typed form, and output a pre-prepared response when a certain word or phrase is detected in the input. These systems fail to take into account different phrasings, terminology, sentence structure, syntax, and speech patterns. This limits the ability of such systems to properly respond to user input. These systems do not create association between words or correlate words and phrases. Because these systems do not understand the input in a contextual basis, they fail to provide an intelligent or useful response and/or fail to take actions desired by a user.
Artificial intelligence systems have been utilized in various different applications to interact with individuals. These applications have included customer service applications, voice response systems, games, and pure novelty pseudo-interactive programs. In efforts to reduce costs associated with customer service, many companies have implemented automated systems which interact with customers instead of allowing customers to speak with representatives immediately. Some systems allow users to complete entire transactions such as paying a utility bill over the phone without ever speaking to a representative. Many companies use automated systems to obtain preliminary information from customers in order to reduce the amount of time that the customer has to speak with a representative or in order to direct the customer to a representative in a certain area of expertise. Many existing automated customer service systems are directed to reducing the amount of time that a live representative must spend handling customer concerns.
Existing automated customer service systems are deficient in a number of ways and fail to meet the needs of companies that utilize them. The primary deficiency of existing systems is that they provide very few options to the user. For example, many systems provide the user with a list of options, but if the user needs service with respect to something that is not on the menu the system is unable to assist the user. The user must respond with specific words or phrases as opposed to a natural language response.
A second drawback of existing customer service systems is that they are extremely slow. If a menu of options is presented to a user as discussed above, the user must listen to all of the options until he or she hears the option that applies to him or her. This time is costly for the company that owns the system because the company typically pays the phone bill for the call. In addition, longer phone calls mean that fewer phone lines are open for additional customers to call. Many companies rate their customer service by call time and the quality of their customer service is often perceived by customers as higher quality if call length is minimized. Many users also choose to bypass these automated systems because of the inefficiencies of the system.
Another major drawback of existing automated customer service systems is that the customer often feels neglected and dissatisfied when forced to deal with the automated system instead of speaking to a live person if the automated system fails to meet their needs.
Another industry that utilizes automated systems is the telephone chat industry. Some of these systems are designed to give weather or sports information to callers or to engage the caller in an interactive story. A caller typically calls these numbers to request information such as weather forecasts or sports scores. Some of these system provide the caller with an opportunity to chat with a representative. Because these systems typically charge a fee to the caller based on the length of the call, it is advantageous for the administrator of the system to entertain the caller for as long as possible. Existing automated systems are useless in this arena because callers pay for the ability to have lively conversation with a live person. Providing individuals for the callers to interact with, however, is extremely expensive. A need exists for an artificial intelligence system that is able to interact with individuals intelligently and respond to the individuals with intelligent, responsive results.
There is also a need for artificial intelligence in computing, such as personal computing. An artificial intelligence system may be implemented in a computer environment which allows a user to navigate the various programs operable on a computer and perform functions on a computer without using a keyboard or mouse as input devices. Such a system would allow a user to simply speak various commands to a computer and have the computer execute actions in response to the user commands. The system may ask questions of the user to more accurately determine what the user wishes to accomplish and react to the user's answers. One example of such a system is an artificial intelligence system that responds to user requests for navigating the Internet, such as “Please open the New York Times page” and “Go to the sports section.”
There is also a need for an advanced artificial intelligence system in portable electronics and computing. The rise in usage of portable electronic devices, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants, and digital cameras has led to the need for an improved user interface which will allow a user to quickly utilize the various features associated with each device. Users typically find the input devices such as keyboards and buttons on these devices difficult to manipulate.
An advanced artificial intelligence system is needed in a home environment for physically challenged individuals, particularly those with limited motor skills. Such a system would allow hands-free interaction with various devices and appliances commonly used by such individuals at home, such as the telephone, television, oven, and microwave
Thus, a need exists for an intelligent system that can replace or supplement human beings with respect to a variety of tasks and activities.